Whereas the average man might look at a tree and see naught but a tree, Roland Emmerich sees all—the twisting branches, the dancing leaves, the infinitesimal testimonies to nature’s wonders—and how they might all be exploded, and also it’s not a tree but the White House. Roland Emmerich is a dreamer, so even when he’s told by pessimists that Will Smith is too expensive and famous to star in another Independence Day movie, he refuses to stop dreaming. “It’s changing every month. I sometimes say no, Will Smith will not be in it because he didn’t want to do it at first. Now we have a meeting planned, where we want to talk about it again. Anything can happen,” Emmerich tells Digital Spy, musing fancifully of all the endless possibilities this life can afford, after life pays Will Smith his guarantee.

So long as Emmerich was in a mood of reverie, he also shared his heart’s wish to revisit Stargate with “a sequel, but as a reboot”—one that could spawn a whole new movie trilogy, and expand on a franchise whose three films, three live-action (and one animated) TV series, and myriad games, comics, and books have yet to fully explore the story of a giant space-tube. Emmerich says he’s already been in contact with MGM about the possibility, with MGM saying, “Remakes and reboots—Roland, what about something new?” before erupting in gales of knowing laughter. But in the meantime, all Emmerich has are his dreams, based on previous dreams released in the mid 1990s.